Leading Tomorrow’s Leaders: 5 Ways to Empower High-Potential Talent

Every organization has people who shape its future. They take initiative before it’s assigned. They challenge assumptions. They imagine new possibilities and turn them into reality.

These are your high-potential employees (HiPos)—the ones who will lead what comes next.

But here’s the risk: without the right kind of leadership, they often leave. Not because they lack ability, but because no one has truly seen who they are or what they’re capable of becoming. HiPos often tell us they’re not given the exposure to the business or the new experiences they need to grow.

Another issue is that leaders often confuse performance with potential. The reliable star gets promoted. The restless builder goes unnoticed. And over time, the talent that could have transformed your company walks out the door.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Below are five research-backed and field-tested ways to lead your high-potential talent—not just to retain them, but to help them grow into the leaders your organization will need in the future.

Five Ways to Keep and Elevate Your High-Potential Talent

Develop the Whole Person

Skills-based training alone won’t help you hold onto your HiPos, nor will it help you get the most out of them.

The most effective development plans focus on the person, not just the role. That means helping HiPos connect their work to who they are and who they want to become is critically important for creating the conditions for them to flourish.

At one Fortune 100 tech company, we paired rising leaders with executive coaches. Not just to map career moves, but to explore values, mindset, and long-term energy. One leader shifted from a linear operations path into an innovation role that tapped her creativity and love for systems thinking. Within 18 months, she was leading the company’s fastest-growing product line for Gen Z consumers.

When HiPos feel seen and supported in their ambition and goals, they commit more fully and are much more likely to stick around.

Provide Career Clarity, Not Just Career Ladders

Most HiPos aren’t just chasing promotions. They’re chasing possibilities. They want to help shape the future of the organization.

At a mid-sized healthcare company, we introduced “career sketchpads”—living documents that allowed employees to explore different paths: strategic, technical, cross-functional. These weren’t top-down plans. They were built in conversation with leaders who knew how to ask better questions, not just give advice. Within two years, internal mobility jumped by 43% and HiPo attrition dropped by a third.

By empowering HiPos to be an active participant in their own career development,  leadership sparked a new kind of momentum among it’s top employees—one where clarity, curiosity, and ownership fueled both employee growth and organizational progress.

Create Stretch Without Burnout

Providing your top talent with “stretch assignments” is all the rage, making it almost a cliché. But many leaders don’t do it very well because either they don’t truly know their talent—a stretch assignment for one HiPo would be a tedious exercise for another—or simply don’t make this type of development a priority.

Stretch assignments are critically important for expanding an employee’s skills set as well as the scale and scope of the work they would be doing.

At a global CPG company, a supply chain leader was invited to co-lead a sustainability initiative. She had no background in marketing or ESG. That was the point. She learned to navigate ambiguity, influence across silos, and build new capabilities in real time. The project became a model for global rollout.

The net result of this stretch? High potential employees grow in their careers, and also grow in readiness for their next role.

Put Them in the Arena

HiPos don’t want hypothetical leadership exercises, such as they might experience in a simulation. Rather, they want to lead real initiatives that have real consequences.

In one development program for a financial services firm, Senior Directors on succession plans were each given a business-critical transformation to lead. Projects included reimagining onboarding, redesigning performance systems, and rolling out new reward structures. One team cut onboarding time by 30%. From that cohort of 15 total people, six participants were promoted to Officer within a year.

To unleash the potential of your top talent, let them lead.

Foster Connection, Not Just Content

The strongest HiPo programs create community.

After a leadership immersion we ran for a national retailer, the feedback wasn’t just about tools or takeaways. It was about people. “The content challenged me,” one participant said, “but it was the conversations that changed me.”

In that same program, HiPos were matched with executive mentors, joined peer cohorts, and sat at the table with the CEO during roundtable discussions. The relationships that formed became the glue that held their commitment to the company together, long after the sessions ended.

We followed up a couple of years after the program had ended, and the vast majority of the participants were still with the company, and nearly all had been promoted at least one time. HiPos stay when they feel part of a connected culture – one where relationships spark growth, and shared purpose fuels ambition and committment.

Start With the Leader, Not the Program

At BSM partners, we build leadership development journeys for clients. That’s what we do.

But we know that the success of any program isn’t a function of the program itself, but rather how leaders apply what they have learned into their daily workflow.

HiPos stay when leaders create the conditions for growth—where they feel seen, challenged, and invited to contribute in meaningful ways. A well-designed program can provide the scaffolding, but it’s day-to-day leadership—the conversations, the coaching, the stretch—that ultimately makes the impact.

If you want your best people to stay, don’t just measure what they’ve done. Rather, invest in who they’re becoming so they can help you build the future.

Start with these five methods, and if you’re needing more support in retaining and leading your high-potential talent, BSM Partners has you covered. Reach out and let us know how we can support.

About the Author

Dr. Frank Niles, Ph.D. is Principal Business Psychologist at BSM Partners where he leads the firm’s business transformation practice. A trusted advisor to leaders and organizations around the world, he works with a broad portfolio of clients, ranging from start-ups to Fortune 50 Companies. Frank is regularly featured or quoted in the media, having appeared in Inc, Fast Company, CNN, NBC, NPR, and many more media outlets. In his free time, he climbs mountains.

This article was originally published on BSM Partners’ website. Learn more about leadership development.

Main photo by Pressmaster.

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